Hard to satisfy voting majority

We are taught that the majority rules in a democracy. We use elections to determine those choices.

In more recent years, that has not been our form of government. We require a super-majority to enact new taxes. We allow a single citizen’s appeal to tie up government actions like timber sales. When votes are not yet taken, we seek consensus in an effort to find decisions that offend no one.

So it is that the debate over a home rule charter likely did not end with Tuesday’s results, in which voters said no for the third time in a decade.

An officially appointed county committee is researching home rule. If that group recommends a charter change to the county commissioners — and we suspect it will — then we expect it will be placed for a public vote.

Meanwhile, the proponents of this year’s charter attempt have vowed from the beginning to keep trying. Whether they can solicit enough signatures to create a new referral to voters is more difficult to predict.

As we said earlier, the concept is intriguing. What we cannot predict is whether either group can draft something that will satisfy a majority of Curry County voters.

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